Checking reversibility of boolean functions

Abstract

Following the reversible computation paradigm is essential in the design of many emerging technologies such as quantum computation or dedicated low power concepts. The design of corresponding circuits and systems heavily relies on information about whether the function to be realized is indeed reversible. In particular in hierarchical synthesis approaches where a given function is decomposed into sub-functions, this is often not obvious. In this paper, we prove that checking reversibility of Boolean functions is indeed coNP-complete. Besides that, we propose two complementary approaches which, despite the complexity, can tackle this problem in an efficient fashion. An experimental evaluation shows the feasibility of the approaches.